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The next baked thing: Cupcakes’ days numbered?

By Eric VellendSpecial to the Star

Tues., Feb. 15, 2011

For more than a decade, the cupcake has ruled the pastry case with a pink-gloved fist. And for as long as she’s been the queen of desserts, food experts, pastry chefs and anyone with a sweet tooth have been trying to predict the next pastry to steal her crown.

For a while the French macaron looked to be a contender. The Parisian sandwich cookie, made from delicate meringue wafers and satiny buttercream, comes in dozens of flavours, a rainbow of bright colours and has developed a cult-like following among the city’s bakery hounds.

Mattina, whose signature pastry is a vegan chocolate cupcake, has seen no sign that the hand-held treat is losing steam. She regularly puts together huge orders for birthday parties, weddings and corporate events.

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“A lot of people say the cupcake is going to go away,” she says. “I don’t think that’s true. Cupcakes are classic, easy and approachable.”

The passionate pastry chef is hoping that gourmet doughnuts become the next baked thing. A lifelong fan of “fried dough,” she recently installed a deep fryer at her shop and is now running fresh ginger doughnuts filled with lemon-lime curd as a weekend-only special.

“I wanted to make doughnuts that you can’t get anywhere else,” she says. “So far people are crazy about them — lots of OMGs.”

Michelle Edgar, co-owner of The Sweet Escape in the Distillery District, has also has added doughnuts to her line of pastries this year.

Inspired by a recent trip to Dynamo Donuts in San Francisco, she’s been experimenting with flavours that you won’t find at Tim Hortons anytime soon. Adding bacon into the mix — another food trend with the half-life of uranium — has created her biggest hit.

Edgar loves playing around with classic American confections, even junky snack foods, to make them “better tasting.” She recently introduced her upmarket spin on Pop-Tarts in ginger-pear and raspberry cream cheese flavours.

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“People really like them. I think it’s because they’re not too sweet.”

As for cupcakes, they continue to fly off The Sweet Escape’s shelves with red velvet being the top seller.

“Red velvet is ridiculously popular,” says Edgar, who also makes red velvet ice cream and cheesecake. “It’s pretty, a bright colour and it’s not chocolate, not vanilla, but a hybrid of both.”

Another fan of homey American baking is chef Anthony Rose, who spent his formative years cooking in San Francisco and New York City.

Since the Toronto native took over as executive chef at The Drake Hotel, he’s been offering gourmet doughnuts such as brown butter glazed and chocolate Rice Krispie, and a sumptuous line of cupcakes at the hotel’s café.

“Cupcakes were at their peak about two years ago,” he says. “They’ve slowly gone down since then.”

Before opening Drake BBQ a few doors down from the hotel last fall, he worked with his pastry chef, Karen Vineberg, to develop a new comforting dessert that could be enjoyed in the same spirit as the shop’s saucy pulled pork and chopped brisket sandwiches. Whoopie pies came out on top.

“We wanted something you could hold in your hand, make a mess out of and have fun,” he says of the New England specialty, which has its roots in the Amish kitchen.

Drake’s whoopie pies look like giant Oreo cookies and are described by Rose as “two pieces of cake with icing in the middle.”

“It’s the next cupcake,” he says proudly.

In the U.S., both the New York Times and Food Network star Rachael Ray have crowned pie as the new cupcake, with evidence of dedicated pie shops, unique flavours and innovative baking techniques to back their claim.

But the trend has yet to gain traction in Toronto and will likely stay stuck at the border for awhile. Like the macaron, pies require a skilled hand to make, and will never be as pretty or kid-friendly as the beloved cupcake.

Among gourmet doughnuts, fancy Pop-Tarts and whoopie pies, the latter seems to have the greatest potential to become the next baked thing.

Like the cupcake, a whoopie pie taps into everyone’s childhood love of birthday cake and it’s the easiest of the three to produce.

But in the end a whoopie pie is nothing more than a cupcake top sandwich.

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